On the continent of Europe the terrible Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) between Protestants and Catholics, memorable for the brave deeds of Gustavus Adolphus, had just closed in the Peace of Westphalia, by which Brandenburg—the forerunner of Prussia—was enlarged, and Saxony strengthened, while Switzerland and the low countries, or Netherlands, were acknowledged as independent States. The Belgic Provinces, between the Netherlands and France, divided among themselves, remained submissive to Spain and the Roman Catholic Church. They became involved in the wars attending the decline of the Spanish monarchy, and during the remainder of the century were the theater of fierce struggles between contending armies, and were subjected to many changes of boundaries.

Central Europe, where were the States of Bohemia, Bavaria, Moravia, Austria, and smaller principalities, was loosely confederated into the German Empire under the Imperial Diet at Frankfort. Ferdinand III at this time held the imperial dignity. His death was followed by the long reign of Leopold I (1657-1705). He attacked the Turks on the East and the French monarch on the West. From the former he obtained a great stretch of territory, and in the combination which kept down the towering ambition of the latter he was one of the chief factors. In the North was the strong kingdom of Sweden—soon to be made still stronger by the victories of Charles X—and the weak kingdom of Denmark. On the East were Poland and Russia and the Turk. On the South were Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Portugal, after a most honorable history had been annexed by Philip II to the Spanish realm; but in 1640, after a forced union of one hundred and sixty years, it was freed by a bold and successful conspiracy of the nobles, from all connection with Spain, although its independence was not formally recognized till 1668. Spain had wholly lost her former headship in European politics and was in a bad way under the last rulers of the Hapsburg dynasty, bigoted, intolerant, incompetent; disordered finances, impaired industries—due largely to the barbarous expulsion of the Moors—and inferior military forces left her in the second rank of powers.

Italy was a mere geographical expression, the territory being split up under the rule of petty princes largely swayed by foreign influence; much of the country indeed was under direct foreign dominion. Among the native rulers the Dukes of Savoy were perhaps the most enterprising and successful. Venice maintained a fair degree of prosperity. Naples was an appanage of the Spanish crown. The popes had larger territorial possessions, in the center of the country, than at any previous or subsequent time. But this local importance was more than offset by loss in the larger sphere of influence and prerogative. Convenience, indeed, occasionally led a prominent sovereign to submit some question to the papal judgment; in many instances his wishes were openly disregarded, and in the leading questions of European politics no deference was paid him.

An interesting episode occurring just at this time perhaps deserves mention. Queen Christina of Sweden, the talented but eccentric daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, in 1654 abdicated her throne in favor of her cousin, quitted the land of her fathers, was solemnly admitted into the Roman Catholic Church at Innspruck, and established her permanent residence in Rome till her death in 1689. The pope, Alexander VII, considered it the special distinction of his pontificate that he was permitted to welcome so distinguished a convert; but she did not prove in all things wholly satisfactory, not finding matters quite as she expected—a frequent experience in such cases. To Gilbert Burnet, the English Bishop of Salisbury, who paid her a visit, she said, “It was certain that the Church was governed by the immediate care of God, for none of the four popes that she had known since she came to Rome had common sense.” She called them “the first and the last of men.”

The history of France during the period in which FÉnelon flourished must be given at somewhat greater length if we would properly comprehend the part which he took on the stage of action. And especially must we attend to the character of Louis XIV, with whom FÉnelon was brought into such exceeding close and fateful relations. Louis came to the throne in 1643, but as he was then only five years old he did not assume personal charge of the government. Cardinal Mazarin, who had succeeded the great Richelieu at his death in 1642, was chief minister in the Council of State which advised the Queen Mother and regent, Anne of Austria. On the death of Mazarin in 1661, Louis took supreme direction of affairs, and retained it until his death in 1715. It was a very long and, in some respects, a very successful reign, the most illustrious in French annals; a sort of Solomonic era, to be compared with the age of Pericles in Greece, Augustus in Rome, and Elizabeth in England. It was brilliant in many directions; an age of conquest and the extension of territory abroad; an age of great personalities in literature and art at home. Among the latter are the well-known names of Corneille, the tragic poet; Moliere, the master of comedy; Racine, La Fontaine, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Pascal, Malebranche, and Madame de SÉvignÉ. Voltaire and Rousseau were born during this reign, but mainly flourished later. Among eminent painters were Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Lebrun, and Mignard. As architects, Mansart and Perrault were famous; among sculptors, Piget; among composers, Lulli. Celebrated in the pulpit were Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, and Flechier; as Church historians, Natalis Alexander, Fleury, and Tillemont. In the field the prestige of the French armies was upheld by the genius of Turenne, CondÉ, Vauban, Luxemburg, and Catinat. Under these marshals many victories were won in an almost constant succession of wars with Spain, Holland, England, the Empire, and other antagonists. The peace which Louis dictated to Europe at Nimeguen, February 5, 1679, raised him to his highest point of power and glory. The headship of the world seemed to be within his grasp, if indeed it was not already attained. His courtiers worshiped him as a demigod; two triumphal arches were erected to his honor in Paris; foreign governments regarded him with keen apprehension or with servile awe. He excited wonder and fear throughout the continent, for his ambitious projects of still vaster dominion seemed to threaten the safety and independence of all his neighbors. He was possessed of a strong mind, a resolute will, considerable sagacity and penetration, much aptitude for business, and an indefatigable industry. His powers of application were remarkable. When he gave direction in 1661 that he would be his own prime minister, that all business should pass through his hands, and all questions be decided directly by himself, every one expected that he would soon tire of the drudgery which this would impose; but he kept it up till the end of his life, laboring regularly in his cabinet eight hours a day. He had the most extravagant ideas of the royal prerogative. He was an absolute, irresponsible monarch, accustomed to say and mean, “The State: it is myself.” Even the property of the realm he considered as his. In an instruction to his son he declared, “Kings are absolute lords and have naturally the full and free disposal of all the goods possessed, as well by Churchmen as by laymen, to use them at all times according to the general need of their State.” Having this conception of his power, regarding his authority as delegated immediately from heaven, he surrounded himself with those who would be subservient to his will, and the one avenue of advancement was his favor; without this, virtue and merit had little or no chance of recognition. He made his court at Versailles a very splendid one, everywhere praised and admired as the model of taste and refinement. It became the center of fashion for Europe, and the only place of high attraction in the kingdom. Henri Martin, in his “History of France,” says: “Whoever had once tasted this life so brilliant, so animated, so varied, could no longer quit it and return to his native manor without dying of languor and ennui. Everything seemed cold and dead away from this place of enjoyment, which appeared, to town and province, as the very ideal of human life.” It is estimated that a sum, equal to more than 400,000,000 francs at the present rate, was laid out on the palaces and pleasure-grounds of Versailles, transforming an unsightly district into fairy-land.

Was this Louis XIV, then, a really great man? Not when tried by tests that go far and reach deep. As one has said: “His claim to renown lies more in the diligent and tireless ambition with which he improved favoring circumstances than in the creation of great results out of small means by force of personal genius and energy. It is also a limiting factor in our estimate of Louis that he exercised no care to husband the resources of his country, and sacrificed to thirst for personal display the chances of future prosperity. This imposing and brilliant reign left France exhausted and harboring within herself the germs of violent revolution.” In the latter part of his reign the coalition against him under Marlborough and Prince Eugene proved eminently successful, and much of his ill-gotten acquisitions had to be disgorged. Moreover, his reign was also a failure in that, for the sake of slight and temporary gains on the continent of Europe, he threw away the opportunity to forestall in Asia and America the progress of England, so soon to pass France in the race for world supremacy, and left his kingdom, at the close of his reign, exhausted and crippled, in no condition to enter upon the decisive stage of the great conflict whose approach he did not foresee. Before his burial the eyes of Frenchmen had begun to be open to the shadowy side of his reign; the glamour and the glory could no longer hide the tyranny and the shame, and very few mourned at the death of the magnificent despot. He was far from great also in his private life; for that was, for a long time, one of unblushing licentiousness. Different mistresses were made successively, and in part simultaneously, the rivals of his dishonored queen, Maria Theresa of Spain, who died in 1683. No less than ten children were born to him out of wedlock, and publicly acknowledged. After the death of his queen he did somewhat better, being privately married to Madame de Maintenon, as already noted.

The cruel persecutions of the Huguenots must also be set down against the king, although in this, surely, we should make much allowance because of the feeling of the age in such matters—a feeling not by any means the same as in our day. Louis, like many others before and since, endeavored to atone for the excesses and frailties of his private life by his public zeal for orthodoxy, fancying that the slaughter of heretics would offset his adulteries. His crowning crime was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. By this arbitrary act of unprovoked despotism he annulled forever all the highly prized privileges granted to the Huguenots, after their large sufferings and heroic efforts in self-defense, by Henry IV and Louis XIII. He absolutely prohibited the exercise of their religion throughout the kingdom, with the sole exception of Alsace; ordered their temples to be leveled with the ground, and their ministers to quit France within fifteen days; forbade the people to follow their pastors into exile under pain of confiscation and condemnation to the galleys; and required their children to be baptized henceforth by the Catholic priests and educated as members of the Established Church. Before this, in the earlier years of the reign, stringent measures had been set in operation for the conversion of the Protestants and the establishment of uniformity of faith and Church government throughout the kingdom. Louis was intolerant of dissent, partly from political motives. He could not brook that any of his subjects should exercise so much independence and freedom of thought as was involved in worshiping God or thinking about Him after a different pattern from the one set by himself. They ought all to take their opinions from the throne, he held, in religious as well as in secular matters, and because they did not they were extremely objectionable and dangerous. As early as 1656 a disposition was shown to interpret the Edict of Nantes—given by Henry IV, April 15, 1598—in a narrow partisan fashion, to the disadvantage of the Protestants. Numbers of the Reformed places of worship were shut up on frivolous pretenses. The worshipers were excluded from all public functions, from the liberal professions, from the universities, from engaging in various branches of commerce and industry. They were forbidden to intermarry with Catholics, and their children were encouraged to forsake the faith of their parents by being declared capable of choosing for themselves at the age of seven years. Every sort of pressure was applied. A Bureau of Conversions was established under the direction of the Minister Pelissier, who disbursed the funds intrusted to him at the rate of six livres for every abjuration of the Reformed religion. Milder measures not proving sufficiently efficacious and speedy, more severe and savage means were employed. Dragoons were sent into the disturbed districts and quartered on the inhabitants; they were permitted, and even encouraged, to abandon themselves to every kind of brutal license, violence, and excess, establishing a veritable reign of terror wherever they appeared. It is no wonder that, under these horrors, wearied and worried well-nigh to death by such intolerable impositions, great numbers of Huguenots recanted, nominally, although, of course, their real beliefs were not changed. And when the protecting Edict was formally revoked, still more fearful cruelties followed. Multitudes of the Reformed, obstinately refusing obedience, were consigned to loathsome dungeons, racked with exquisite tortures, and treated with every kind of outrage short of actual murder. Numbers of females were immured for life in convents; infants were torn from the arms of their mothers; their property was destroyed, and whole districts were laid waste. How far the king was strictly responsible for the whole of these horrors is a matter of some question; but it is certain that he received with great satisfaction the chorus of congratulations, on this memorable Catholic triumph, from the court sycophants, who hailed him as the new Constantine, and who included in their number such men as Bossuet, Massillon, Racine, and La Fontaine. But Louis inflicted almost as deadly a blow upon his country by these persecutions as the rulers of Spain had upon theirs when they drove out the Moors and Jews. France robbed herself of her best citizens, the most enterprising and industrious of her skilled artisans. They fled abroad to the number of at least a quarter of a million, escaping from France to enrich England, Holland, and other countries with the fruits of their labors. Among them was the Duke of Schomberg, one of the best generals of his time, who placed his sword at the disposal of the Prince of Orange. Many also who remained were so crippled and depressed that they could no longer render their best service. Moreover, a bitter and profound resentment was kindled in the Protestant States of Europe, which acted very unfavorably upon the foreign relations of France, and strengthened the hands of the coalition against her. So, in every sense, the policy must be adjudged a mistaken one, counting against the greatness of the king.

It is important to inquire what was the state of the French Church at this period. It is impossible, of course, for us to enter into extended details, but we can hardly understand either FÉnelon or his times without knowing something about the ecclesiastical religious questions which were then agitating the public mind. Religion was by no means in a stagnant state, or treated with indifference and apathy; it everywhere excited keenest attention. No subject was more eagerly discussed or occupied a larger share of thought. Besides the general controversy between Protestants and Romanists, there were many divisions in the ranks of the latter. There was fierce conflict between the Jesuits and Jansenists, also between the Gallicans and Ultramontanists. For a full recital of the story our readers will be obliged to consult Church histories and cyclopedias.

Of the Jesuits little need here be said; their history is very well known. Established by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, the system was, in the period we are considering, something over a hundred years old, and numbering about fifteen thousand members, of whom half were priests. Its leading purposes were the overthrow of Protestantism and the strengthening of the papacy. It had a magnificent organization, it largely controlled the education of the youth of the better classes of society, and it was intensely zealous in missionary operations, Francis Xavier, so illustrious in this matter, being one of its original founders. In politics it often favored popular rights, especially if it would benefit the papacy by reducing the power of the sovereign; yet it usually secured control over the princes by obtaining their ear in the confessional. In doctrine it was opposed to Augustinianism, and in ethics became notorious for most dangerous looseness. It should not be forgotten, however, that the order had at all times many members eminent for piety and strict morality, some of the highest saints being numbered with them. In France the important office of confessor to the king was filled by members of this order under Henry IV, Louis XIII, XIV, XV; and, of course, in this way an enormous influence was exercised upon the royal policy at home and abroad. The connivance of these confessors with the scandalous lives of the kings did more than anything else to undermine respect for the Roman Catholic Church and for religion in general among the educated classes. Between the Jesuits and Jansenists there was fierce war.

The latter took their name from Bishop Cornelius Jansen, of Ypern, who died in 1638, after devoting his whole life to the study of the works of St. Augustine. His followers were Augustinians in the fullest sense of the term, accepting the extreme doctrines of election and predestination which are known among Protestants as Calvinism; but this in no way predisposed them to favor the Huguenots. On the contrary they seemed to hate them all the more because of this manifest approach to them in some of their principles, partly because it exposed them to a galling criticism from the Jesuits. The Jansenists in many ways recommend themselves to our approval. They opposed a simply formal righteousness, insisted on the necessity for an inward preparation to receive benefits from the sacraments, and laid stress upon the reading of the Scriptures. In regard to morals, they advocated rigid self-discipline, were foes of luxury, the theater, and other doubtful or noxious pleasures. They also had more independence than most classes of society. They were not ready to surrender everything to the absolute sovereignty of the king; they stood for liberty in the Church. In point of ability and culture they furnished some of the best minds of France, and some of the best models of literary excellence which the age could boast. Blaise Pascal, whose “Provincial Letters” (1656) against the Jesuits inflicted upon them so severe a blow by their scathing exposures, was of this party. So was De Sacy, who translated the Bible into the version in general use; and Antoine Arnauld, the celebrated scholar and Doctor of the Sorbonne, the theological department of the University of Paris. His sister, Jacqueline, became abbess of the convent of Port Royal near Paris, and made it renowned for its purity and piety. Jansenism or “Calvinistic Catholicism,” as it has been called, finally went down before its enemies, the popes deciding against it more than once. On many accounts it deserved a better fate; but we can not regret that such a travesty of Christianity as the sole salvation of an arbitrarily limited and eternally selected few was as conclusively defeated in the Roman Catholic Church as it has since been in the Protestant.